


Humpty-Dumpty

by Rueroux



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dark, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Hurt, I rather hesitate to say 'comfort'..., Moderately graphic description of violence, The violence is not actually the point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rueroux/pseuds/Rueroux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is a doctor and a surgeon. He fixes people. That's what he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humpty-Dumpty

**Author's Note:**

> This is DARK. And probably not just a little disturbing. But it was incredibly fun to write, and I repent not in the least. Enjoy!

‘The Anatomist’ is what the newspapers were calling the killer terrorizing East London.

Distasteful as John found the practice of dramatizing killings and the people who commit them, he had to admit this particular nickname did have the taint of accuracy to it. The man, and he knew it was a man now, certainly knew what he was doing as he sawed torsos and limbs and digits into pieces. He knew where to cut in order to avoid too much bone ( _"hard to saw through"_ ). Knew exactly what he could remove from his victims and still keep them alive ( _and suffering_ ) as long into the process as he could manage.

John did have to admit that the man ( _"Call me Bobby!"_ ) certainly had some skills. John should know, after all. He had already watched as ( _Bobby_ ) he dismembered two screaming bodies ( _people_ , his desperate mind whispered) over the course of the night.

( _’No, please stop! You don’t have to kill them, I’m a surgeon, I can still fix them, please!’_ )

John’s fingers moved absently beside the thigh, painting whorls across the sticky, blood-soaked floor. ( _It spread so fast, the entire floor of the cage was covered in minutes._ ) His hand bumped the spool of black thread and he picked it up to look at it. ( _"A surgeon, you say?" Bobby laughed and reached into a drawer. He pulled out a spool of black thread and tossed it through the bars onto John’s lap. "So fix them!"_ )

John set his hand with the spool back down next to the thigh. _I need a needle_ , he thought. Blood thoroughly saturated the edges of his jumper’s sleeves. His pants were a lost cause hours ago. ( _Parts of the body, once removed from the whole, don’t retain blood well_ , he remembered thinking hysterically)

John looked up and watched ( _Bobby_ ) him through the bars for a while as he mopped up his workspace. He almost didn’t want to interrupt. But it was important. John cleared his throat. It hurt. ‘Bobby.’ It hurt to speak, too, but he managed to draw ( _Bobby’s_ ) his attention. ( _They screamed, so loud, and then when they couldn’t, John screamed instead, trying to take_ ( _Bobby’s_ ) _his attention away from them. He screamed until he couldn’t._ )

"What is it?" ( _Bobby_ ) He sounded curious.

John cleared his throat again. It still hurt. ‘I need a needle.’

( _Bobby_ ) He paused in his mopping. A slow smile spread across his face. ( _John faded in and out, woozy. When he opened his eyes, a face smiled back at him. "Hello," the smiling face said, ‘I’m--_ ) ( _He_ ) Bobby set his mop down and nodded to himself. "Yes, of course you do. What’s a surgeon supposed to do with thread and no needle?" He turned and rifled through the drawer behind him. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he scratched his head and thought.

John watched, waited. Unconsciously he mimicked ( _his_ ) Bobby’s motion and got ( _more_ ) blood in his hair. Thought, _Sherlock has the right of it. You can’t make use of your skills if you don’t have the right tools._ ( _data, needles, thread_ )

( _He_ ) Bobby pulled open a drawer further down the work bench and grunted in satisfaction. He pulled out what looked like a sewing kit and removed a single needle from the red plastic container. He approached the cage. ( _"Alright, so who wants to go first?’ They all press against the far side of the cage, whimpering. How about you?"_ ) ( _He_ ) Bobby walked around to the side John was sitting nearest to and thrust his arm through the bars, holding the needle out to him. "Will this do?"

John stared at the needle for a second and then took it from his fingers. He tilted it and considered whether he could curve it a little bit. He could. ‘Yes,’ John replied. His other hand still clutched the spool on the floor next to the thigh.

( _He_ ) Bobby smiled again. ( _He kept smiling the whole time, wider when he encountered a joint._ ) "Good," he said. He walked back over to his mop and considered it. "You know, I’ve had a long night. I’m going to pop upstairs and have a kip. I’ll leave the light on for you while you work." ( _He_ ) Bobby waved to John and headed up the staircase, leaving the light on as promised.

John got to work. ( _John was a surgeon. He knew what he was doing, too._ )

+++++

Sherlock let the police burst into the house ahead of him. They would take the top levels first and would find Robert McLeod there. John wouldn’t be upstairs, he would be in the basement. (Sherlock intended to be the one to fetch him.)

He stepped towards the door, but was stopped by Lestrade’s hand heavy on his shoulder.

“Not by yourself,” Lestrade said.

Sherlock shrugged him off. “Fine.”

Together they entered the house and found the door leading to the basement. They descended.

Downstairs was much how Sherlock had expected it to be. A workbench, tools, copious amounts of blood poorly cleaned up in some areas, not at all in others. A cage.

Lestrade gagged at the overpowering smell of blood underlined with vomit and fear-sweat, but stayed upright and moved with Sherlock across the floor. There were three bodies in the cage. Two lay out on the floor, limbs akimbo, stark naked. For half a second, Sherlock thought they were simply unconscious. As he moved closer however, he could see that they weren’t breathing. (And that neither of them were John.) He saw that at fairly regular intervals along their bodies, straight black lines bisected their limbs and torsos, ringed their fingers and toes.

Lestrade fetched the keys from where they hung next to the workbench and opened the cage. Sherlock stepped inside and crouched down in front of John who sat in the corner, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, head resting on top. The rust color of dried blood contrasted sharply against the blond of his hair tinted gold in the soft lighting of the room. Sherlock laid a hand on John’s arm and John looked up at him, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry,” John said, his voice rough and quiet, barely there. “I tried, I really did.” John’s cheeks were wet and smeared with blood. There was a streak of it across his forehead.

Lestrade cursed loudly and colorfully and John glanced over to see him examining the bodies. John spoke a little louder to include Lestrade in the conversation, and repeated, almost pleading, “I really did try. I put them back together.” He huffed, almost smiled.

Sherlock patted his arm. “Of course you did, you’re a doctor. That’s what you do.”

John did smile now, indulgently, as he did when Sherlock had missed something important about people. “No it’s not, Sherlock. I fix people.” His eyes slid back to the bodies for a moment. “These people I couldn’t fix.” He huffed again and behind Sherlock, Lestrade made an muffled sound and stood quickly, stepping out of the cage. John continued, “I’m good, but I’m not that good. I could only put the pieces back.” He grimaced. "Mostly anyway."

Sherlock stared at John’s face, his bland expression, the tears still streaming down his cheeks. “Do you know, John? I think I understand now what you meant about limits and reaching them.”

John was still smiling at him, amused. “That’s good, Sherlock. That’s really good.”

A needle and an empty thread spool lay on the floor beside him.


End file.
